Tsunamis As A Metaphor

In light of the recent tragic tsunami in South Asia, I have noticed an increase in the use of tsunamis as a metaphor for various shit. Please think about the context you are using the metaphor in before you proceed. For instance, saying that the Nazis use of gas chambers produced a tsunami of dead Jewish bodies seems appropriate enough, though doesn't really make much sense.

However, the New England Patriots defense was not like a tsunami against Peyton Manning.

In this story, the Harvard president made some sexist remarks about women. This is certainly serious, but not quite enough to warrant comparison with the instant death of over 200,000 people, and the destruction of several nations-worth of people's way of life. Topical humor is funny.

Here's the highlights:

No Break in the Storm Over Harvard President's Words
By SAM DILLON and SARA RIMER
The New York Times

Members of a Harvard faculty committee that has examined the recruiting of professors who are women sent a protest letter yesterday to Lawrence H. Summers, the university's president, saying his recent statements about innate differences between the sexes would only make it harder to attract top candidates.

The committee told Mr. Summers that his remarks did not ''serve our institution well.''

''Indeed,'' the letter said, ''they serve to reinforce an institutional culture at Harvard that erects numerous barriers to improving the representation of women on the faculty, and to impede our current efforts to recruit top women scholars. They also send at best mixed signals to our high-achieving women students in Harvard College and in the graduate and professional schools.

'' The letter was one part of an outcry that continued to follow remarks Mr. Summers made Friday suggesting that biological differences between the sexes may be one explanation for why fewer women succeed in mathematic and science careers.

One university dean called the aftermath an ''intellectual tsunami,'' and some Harvard alumnae said they would suspend donations to the university.

Perhaps the most outraged were prominent female professors at Harvard.

''If you were a woman scientist and had two competing offers and knew that the president of Harvard didn't think that women scientists were as good as men, which one would you take?'' said Mary C. Waters, chairman of Harvard's sociology department, who with other faculty members has been pressing Mr. Summers to reverse a sharp decline in the hiring of tenured female professors during his administration.

At the center of the storm, Mr. Summers posted a statement late Monday night on his Web page, saying that his comments at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit economic research organization in Cambridge had been misconstrued and pledging to continue efforts to ''attract and engage outstanding women scientists.''

''My aim at the conference was to underscore that the situation is likely the product of a variety of factors and that further research can help us better understand their interplay,'' he said. ''I do not presume to have confident answers, only the conviction that the harder we work to research and understand the situation, the better the prospects for long term success.''

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